Learning Library - Education

One primary goal of the Learning Library is to facilitate educators and students in learning about New Media Literacies and other topics related to media education. As such, the Learning Library is foremost a platform to aggregate and collect relevant learning challenges and media materials that are engaging, fun, and novel ways for learning about media culture and media practices. In addition, other collections about all subject areas such STEM, social studies, and classical literature are put together as a resource for educators and for students interested in these topics.

For example, the Project New Media Literacies collection consists of more than 30 challenges on various NML topics ranging from Standing on the Should of Giants, a challenge about Appropriation, to What are you doing?, a challenge about Multitasking. These challenges serve as starting points for educators and students to learn about New Media Literacies.

This use case, "Education", is based on the experience of Craig Leach, a teacher at the Somerville High School in Somerville, MA, teaching a Media and TV Production course as an elective.


It is important to note that Craig Leach is a relatively new teacher. He has a background in media production, and is passionate about media education. In partnership with Home Inc, a non-profit media education organization, Craig developed his Media and TV Production course to integrate New Media Literacies concepts into his syllabus.

At the beginning of our partnership with Craig during the pilot year, Craig wrote about his thoughts on media education and his goal for his class:

I am interested in promoting people to make educated decisions about the accuracy of media and media sources, deciphering what is truth and fiction and how to research to find out.

With this goal in mind, we encouraged Craig to begin our partnership with browsing through the NML collection of challenges, paying particular attention to Appropriation, Networking and Judgment, as these might be particularly interesting and relevant to his class. Craig took an interest in issues related to Appropriation right away and developed a number of activities for his class around this topic. Below is a brief video clip of his first day talking about the topic of Appropriation in his class.



We see in the video that Craig really emphasizes the importance of educating oneself about these new concepts before bringing them into the classroom.

In an interview with Craig later in the semester of his class, he noted on how much he had learned about Appropriation from the Learning Library, and how much more he still needed to learn. However, what might be more important was that he had come to adopt a new pedagogical view that, when it came to new media, he was learning with his students. He stated in reflection of changes in his teaching practices:

I have let students have the flooor when talking about new media because they are truly experts in this field. Instead of dominating conversations and ideas, [I am now] more flexible and open to hearing their opinions and suggestions about technology.

This was truly the spirit and intent of the Learning Library as a platform developed for educators to learn with their students and explore new concepts and ideas together, some of which outside of the teacher's comfort zone.

After working through many of the challenges in the NML collection, and Adapting and Integrating many of the challenges into his classroom (such as the Don't Be Afraid to Failchallenge in the Learning Library), Craig developed a new understanding of New Media Literacies and media education in general. He reported,

My current impression of media literacy is that it is not just one sided. Traditionally I viewed media literacy as developing competencies and skills to learn how to dissect media that is presented to my students and I as audience members. Now I see that with emerging technologies, we are the media creators. This means that we are not only responsible for decoding what we take in, we are also responsible for the messages and impact of the media we create.

The Learning Library - Education use case is indeed about the education of New Media Literacies; but more importantly, it is also about providing a new framework for educators and students in their thinking about media and education. By engaging with the Learning Library, students and educators not only learn about NML terms and concepts, but also practice and participate in a community that exercises and celebrates new media practices.


The Learning Library is developed as a tool to facilitate educators and students' learning about the New Media Literacies, and thus we highly encourage anyone interested in NML related topics to begin the exploration with the Learning Library.

In addition to the Learning Library, Project New Media Literacies has also developed a series of resources for educators ranging from videos to curriculum guides to academic articles that complement each other:

• NML's YouTube channel: a collection of video clips related to a diverse range of media practices as well as talks and lectures on NML related topics.
• What are the New Media Literacies: a brief introductory video explaining what are the New Media Literacies and the intent of our research.
• The Teacher's Strategy Guides: a series of curriculum resources for the formal classroom.
• The Ethics Casebook: a series of curriculum ideas and lesson plans on engaging students in reflecting on and practicing ethical decision-making when working with digital media.
• The NML White Paper: A research report that provided the foundation for all Project New Media Literacies work.
• NML Professional Development initiatives

We encourage you to begin your exploration of the Learning Library by completing the required challenges on Attribution, Copyright, and Tagging. Then proceed to browse through the NML collection in the Learning Library and reflect on the following questions:

• What New Media Literacies topics interest you?
• What topics are most relevant for your classroom or organization?
• What have you learned about these topics?
• What other issues around these topics are missing in the Learning Library?
• Please provide your reflections in the comments below.